How Wisconsin went from also-ran to All-American in less than five years

Dec. 10, 2016. The UW Field House crowd stood in disbelief. The Wisconsin Badgers volleyball team had just lost a five-set thriller to Stanford in the NCAA regional final after winning the first two sets. The Badgers walked off the court, dejected, as their opponents cheered and celebrated.

But shortly after, there was much louder cheering echoing through the Field House. As head coach Kelly Sheffield tells it, the Badgers walked off the court and headed toward the locker room. He stopped the four seniors and turned them around, ushering them back to the court. These women, who worked so hard to turn around a program that had fallen to mediocrity, stood and watched as more than 6,000 people stood and cheered, clapped and cried for them.

There was not a dry eye in the Field House that snowy December evening. Although not a scrap of publicly available footage is available, anyone who was there can tell you the same story.

“The crowd’s reaction was just one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed in sports,” Sheffield says. “Everybody that was there, those four players still mention it and get emotional about that moment.”

The Stanford team that had stormed back from 0-2 to take the match went on to win the national title. Badger team member Lauren Carlini knew then that she would never play another match in red and white.

“And I remember going and sitting in the locker room with Haleigh [Nelson] after,” Carlini says now, nearly a year later. “Everyone else had kind of left, and we were just sitting there in our jerseys. We didn’t want to leave, we didn’t want to take it off, we didn’t want it all to end.”

Standing in the Field House, watching the Badgers’ two-set lead slowly erode, felt like watching the dynasty built over the past four years falling apart. It seemed like the end of an era.

Until it didn’t.

Until it didn’t.

Even after losing a senior class that made a national title game, two regional finals and a regional semifinal, the Badgers haven’t lost a step. They stormed to their first undefeated nonconference season since 2010, losing only one set in the process. 

Five years ago, the Badgers didn’t have a dynasty to lose. Their longstanding coach, Pete Waite, had resigned. The Badgers hadn’t made an NCAA tournament appearance since 2007.

That was about to change.

New Beginnings

Americans love to wax poetic about sports. Open ESPN Magazine or Sports Illustrated and you’ll find sports journalists spinning long passages about football or baseball or what have you. But volleyball never gets that, which is somewhat mind-boggling. It’s an incredibly watchable sport.

The simple progression of a perfect pass to a set to a thunderous swing from a hitter can be beautiful. The sport offers dramatic swings in momentum, a variety of different styles and spectacular one-minute rallies. On any given point, you can see a hitter near the net tip a ball gently over a blocker on the other side, or hammer a ball to the floor past them. However, there weren’t a whole lot of points to love for Wisconsin before the arrival of Sheffield and the new class that arrived in 2013.

In 2013, propelled by Sheffield and starting freshmen Carlini and Nelson, the Badgers finished the regular season at 22-9, earning their first postseason berth since 2007.

After storming through their regional, Wisconsin arrived in the Final Four, held in Seattle. Their opponent? Only Texas, the defending national champions. On paper, Wisconsin was completely overmatched; the Longhorns were bigger, more physical and more experienced on the national stage.

But paper doesn’t always translate. Paper wouldn’t predict the Badgers appearing in four straight regional semifinals or returning to the conversation of national title contenders. Paper wouldn’t put Carlini, Nelson and their teammates in a position to contest the national title. Paper couldn’t see all of the moments that would define the Badgers over the next five years.

POINT ONE: Wisconsin vs. Texas, National Semifinal. Dec. 19, 2013. 24-23 in the fourth set (UW leads, 2-1)

After the Badgers shocked the crowd — and presumably Texas — by winning the first two sets and reaching a match point in the third, the Longhorns appeared to be reasserting themselves.

The fourth set swung back and forth, changing momentum repeatedly, with neither team able to seize control. But at 23-23, Wisconsin’s Deme Morales sent the ball off the Texas block and out of bounds, earning Wisconsin another match point.

“I don’t think it really started to hit me until we hit about point 20, and it was like, ‘Okay, it’s getting close now, this is down to the wire, let’s win this game,’” Carlini says. “Everyone started making really serious eye contact like, ‘We’re about to do this.’”

24-23. Match point Wisconsin. After a rapid back-and-forth, Carlini sent another ball out to Morales, who stands at only 5 feet 7 inches tall (short for a volleyball player). She wound up and smoked the ball, sending it careening off of a defender into the stands. The Badgers collapsed into a dogpile on the court, cheering. They had knocked off the defending champs.

“I still remember that play so well, I watch it all the time,” Carlini says. “I just remember looking at everyone and just crashing into a dogpile like, ‘Oh my God, we did it! We’re going to the national championship.’”

While Wisconsin would go on to fall in the title match to Big Ten rival Penn State, this match re-established the Badgers as a name in the national conversation.

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POINT TWO: Wisconsin vs. Penn State, Louisville Regional Final. Dec. 13, 2014. 7-8 in the first set

After their surprise run to the title game in 2013, Wisconsin didn’t miss a beat. The Badgers breezed through their season the next year, meeting Penn State in the regional final with two match losses on the season. These were the two best teams from what was, and is, the best conference in collegiate volleyball, and this was a highly anticipated match.

Early in the set, it was proceeding a lot like the national title game from the last year. Penn State was hammering away with its superior firepower, and Wisconsin kept up with placement and defense. But at 7-8 in the first set, Carlini, the sparkplug for the Wisconsin offense, went down with an ankle injury. Carlini was widely perceived as the beating heart of Badger volleyball, the center of its revival.

After Carlini left the court to nurse her ankle, the Badgers pulled together and stayed in it. Backup setter Courtney Thomas, who had transitioned into being a hitter after Carlini’s arrival, took over and led the team to a first-set victory on the back of their formidable offense.

In the end, however, the experience and power of Penn State proved too much for a depleted Badgers team, and the Nittany Lions won the next three sets — and eventually another national title. Carlini came back on the floor not too long after leaving, but it was clear something was off. She couldn’t jump set like she normally could, and her usually formidable block was worsened by the pain in her ankle.

According to Carlini, she later found out she had torn multiple ligaments in her ankle, and she barely set foot on a volleyball court until the following fall. Both coaches and players refute the belief that Wisconsin would have won the match hands-down if Carlini had been playing at full strength. But that grain of “what if” will always live on in the annals of Badger volleyball.

POINT THREE: Wisconsin vs. Nebraska. Oct. 24, 2015, 24-22 in the fourth set (UW leads 2-1)

A lot changed for Badger volleyball after 2014. Seven seniors graduated, and the Badgers had to rebuild their offensive attack from the ground up.

The 2015 season got off to a rocky start, with the Badgers dropping their first match of the season to an experienced Western Kentucky team while displaying a stunning lack of cohesion. They quickly recovered, winning 13 of their next 18 matches. Then they faced Nebraska.

The Cornhuskers had only recently joined the Big Ten, and they had mostly dominated the Badgers. Wisconsin had never won in Lincoln, and Nebraska was ranked third in the country. After the Huskers marched their way through the first set, it looked like they were well on their way to another victory.

But the Badgers fought back, led by the tandem of Kelli Bates and USC transfer Lauryn Gillis. On match point in the fourth set, Gillis took a dig and set it out to Bates on the left side and watched as the explosive sophomore hammered the kill home, sealing the Badgers’ stunning upset.

This point defined Wisconsin’s 2015 season: fighting through adversity. The Badgers had to rebuild after losing a majority of their offensive producers and several defensive standouts. The match-winning assist came from Gillis, not Carlini, defining Wisconsin’s ability to overcome adversity.

POINT FOUR: Wisconsin vs. Ohio State, Madison Regional Semifinal. Dec. 9, 2016. 14-19 in the fourth set (OSU leads 2-1)

This was the year. Carlini and Nelson were seniors, and they easily strolled through the two opening NCAA tournament rounds at the UW Field House. Wisconsin’s opponent in the round of 16 was Ohio State, a team they had soundly beaten twice during the regular season.

But something was different that chilly December afternoon at the Field . The Buckeyes played with an unexpected fury. After the Badgers cruised to an easy victory in the first set, Ohio State stormed back to claim sets two and three, including a 31-29 thriller in the third.

Wisconsin looked overmatched in the fourth. Despite the fact that they were the superior team in terms of talent and past results, they were simply getting outplayed. In an attempt to pull his team together, Sheffield called a timeout, one of many over the course of a long match.

“We were kind of spiraling, and we couldn’t stop them,” Carlini says. “I didn’t know what was going on. We were trying really hard, and things were just not falling in our favor. Kelly calls a timeout, and it was about 19-14, and he goes to come in [the huddle] and Haleigh [Nelson] just goes, ‘This is not the end.’”

Nelson had been there since 2013. She had watched these immensely talented teams fall in the postseason, often in the most heartbreaking ways. She stepped into the huddle with one thing on her mind: victory.

Wisconsin scored six straight points to take the lead and went on to win the match. While they would lose to Stanford in the regional final, the comeback win against Ohio State will live on in the memories of players and fans forever. Nelson called this her favorite match as a Badger.

“That beats out our match against Texas in the final four and playing in the national championship match and our [2014] Big Ten championship match against Purdue,” Nelson says. “That Ohio State regional match was my favorite match of my entire career.”

What next?

After the loss to Stanford in the 2016 regional final, Wisconsin said farewell to Carlini and Nelson, as well as fellow seniors Romana Kriskova and Tori Blake. The Badgers had survived transitions before, but this felt different. Carlini had been the beating heart of the Badger team for four years, leading them to four straight regional semifinals and a national title game.

But the young Badgers on the 2017 team demand to be taken seriously. Led by budding freshmen superstar setter Sydney Hilley and middle blocker Dana Rettke, as well as senior hitters Kelli Bates and Lauryn Gillis, this Badger team is not to be trifled with.

Hanging with this competition is a big ask for any program, especially one relying so heavily on freshmen. But Hilley and Rettke are picking up where the last class left off. Rettke is currently on pace to be one of the top hitters in the Big Ten this season, with Hilley staying at the top of her position as well.

Looking at the budding relationship between hitter and setter, you see hints and flickers of Carlini and Nelson, powering kill after kill over the net. You also see something new and different. The similarities are there, but it’s clearly a new team. Don’t tell these women they’re rebuilding.

They’re reloading.

Peter is a senior majoring in journalism with a focus in multimedia storytelling and criticism. He is passionate about podcasts, a million different sports and terrible cinema. If he isn’t striving to be the next Roger Ebert, you can probably find him eating Goldfish and watching “The West Wing.” If becoming Aaron Sorkin’s personal confidant and critic doesn’t materialize into a viable occupation (he’s still holding out hope on that front), Peter wants to move into a career in media criticism and analysis.